The art of the stir-fry

Magic happens when you put a few ingredients into a thin metal vessel over a flame. The heat triggers a chemical reaction in the amino acids and sugars, releasing what the Chinese call wok hei, the distinctive, often elusive, wok fragrance.

It can be hard to replicate wok hei on domestic stoves because the heat is less intense than the fierce gas burners used in Chinese restaurants. To overcome this, you'll need to crank up the heat and preheat the wok for a few minutes before you start, making sure the oil is shimmering or just starting to smoke before you add the ingredients.

Grapeseed oil is Tony Tan's oil of choice because of its neutral flavour and high smoke point, the temperature at which the oil starts to smoke.

Size counts ... Tony Tan recommends cutting all your ingredients more or less the same size so they take the same time to cook. Photo: Ken Irwin

Tan says he would never dream of using a non-stick wok, preferring a round-based cast iron or carbon steel wok, which he seasons before use.

Advertisement

Most woks have a ring on either side, which gets hot along with the wok. Protect your hand with a clean, folded tea towel or oven mitt when you're tossing the ingredients in the wok.

Many woks also come with a lid, handy for slow braising as it prevents the liquid from evaporating. But for a stir-fry, you want to cook the dish quickly in a small amount of oil with the lid off so the steam escapes.

All about the heat ... if the handles of the wok get hot, use a folded tea towel or oven mitt to protect your hands. Photo: Ken Irwin

After use, Tan washes his wok under hot water and cleans it with a cloth wipe or sponge. Scouring a wok with a metal scrubber and liquid detergent strips off the coating, so best to avoid this. He then dries the wok over a flame, removing it from the heat and rubbing on a scant teaspoon of grapeseed oil with paper towel to prevent rust.

Less is more

As with pizza toppings, less is more when it comes to successful stir-fries. Adding the entire contents of the vegie crisper will give your dish in an indistinct, muddy flavour.

"There's no hard-and-fast rule but you don't want to turn it into chop suey," Tan says.

He suggests choosing up to five main ingredients, plus some seasoning ingredients. That might mean lean meat, shellfish or tofu, some onion or spring onion, and several vegetables, along with seasonings such as ginger, garlic, hoisin sauce, fermented black beans or shaoxing rice wine.

Here are some ingredients that work well:

Beef: fillet or rump cut across the grain into 3mm slices. If you like, you can put the meat in the freezer for 20-30 minutes, depending on thickness, to make slicing it easier

Chicken: breast fillet cut into cubes rather than strips so it remains juicy

Before you start

Prepare all the ingredients before you turn on the stove. A stir-fry cooks so quickly that you need everything ready and at hand.

Have the rice cooked and ready to serve when the stir-fry is done. A rice cooker is a handy tool – you can leave the rice to cook by itself, and it's one less pot on the stovetop.

Cut all your ingredients more or less the same size so they take the same time to cook. Bite-sized is best. Dry the vegetables with paper towels so they cook quickly rather than steam. Add thicker and firmer vegetables to the wok first – they take longer.

Measure out the liquids and have them within reach of the stove.

If your stir-fry contains meat, marinating it even briefly adds more flavour. Partially cook the meat first, then set it aside on a clean plate until the vegetables are tender-crisp. At the last minute, return the meat to the wok to reheat.

Add firm (pressed) tofu towards the end of cooking, ensuring it heats through. Avoid stirring it around the wok too much or it will crumble.

Don't over-crowd the wok. If you're cooking more than 500g of ingredients (enough for two people, or four with other dishes), cook in batches so the vegetables retain some crunch and the meat doesn't stew.

Use a wooden spoon or shovel-shaped wok chan to keep the ingredients moving.

Tony Tan's stir-fry recipes

Stir-fry chicken with garlic, celery and spring onions

Although celery is used for this recipe, you can substitute any vegetable with some crunch, such as baby bok choy, broccoli or capsicum. Pork, lamb, beef and seafood are also great cooked this way.

Serves 2 with rice or 4 as part of a multi-course meal

Ingredients

300g chicken breast, cut into 2.5cm dice

2 tbsp shaoxing rice wine

1 tbsp light soy sauce

½ tsp cornflour

sugar to taste

½ cup chicken stock

1 tsp Chinese rice vinegar

1 tbsp oyster sauce

½ tsp sesame oil

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp minced ginger

3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 large stick celery, finely sliced on the diagonal

3 spring onions, cut into 5cm lengths

salt and pepper

1 fresh long red chilli, sliced – optional

Method

Mix together 1 tablespoon shaoxing rice wine, 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce and cornflour in a medium-size bowl and marinate the chicken pieces for 10-15 minutes while you chop the vegetables.

Mix remaining soy sauce, sugar, chicken stock, vinegar, oyster sauce and sesame oil together in a small bowl and set aside.

Preheat the wok on the highest possible flame. Add the oil and when it starts to shimmer or just smoke, add the ginger and stir-fry 20-30 seconds.

Quickly add the garlic and drained chicken and stir-fry for a minute or until the chicken is just beginning to turn white. Remove and transfer to a clean plate.

Wipe out the wok with paper towel.

Reheat the wok and add a little more oil if necessary.

Add the celery and half the spring onions and stir-fry for 1 minute, keeping the vegetables moving around the wok and tossing them in the pan (protect your hand with a clean, folded tea towel or oven mitt).

Pour in the remaining rice wine and stand back in case it flashes. The rice wine adds a delicious smoky flavour to the dish.

Add chicken stock mixture, reduce the heat to medium-high, and cook for 2-3 minutes until the pan juices reduce slightly.

Return the chicken to the wok and add chilli (if using) and remaining spring onion and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve hot with steamed rice.

Stir-fry with bok choy, button mushrooms, chilli and coriander

Many stir-fry recipes start with frying ginger and garlic. I tend to add chopped garlic once I've added the bulk item to prevent it from burning. If you're serving this with rice, prepare it ahead. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.

Serves 2 with rice or 4 as part of a multi-course meal

Ingredients

250g baby bok choy, washed

150g button mushrooms, wiped and quartered

1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

3 tablespoons chopped coriander

1 fresh red long chilli, thinly sliced, seeds removed if preferred

2 tablespoons vegetarian oyster sauce mixed with ¼ cup water

2 teaspoons light soy sauce

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Method

Cut the bok choy stems from the leaves and cut the stems into 3cm lengths. For larger bok choy, cut the stems into bite-size pieces and cut leaves in half crosswise. Keep stems and leaves separate.

Prepare all the other vegetables and set aside.

Mix together the oyster sauce, water and soy sauce in a small bowl and set aside.

Heat the oil in a wok set over high heat. As soon as the oil shimmers or just begins to smoke, add the ginger and quickly stir-fry for 5 seconds.

Add mushrooms and continue to stir-fry until they soften and wilt, 2-3 minutes. Add the garlic and give it a toss for a couple of seconds. Don't let the garlic brown or it becomes bitter.

Add bok choy stems and toss for 1 minute before adding the leaves. Continue to stir-fry rapidly and as soon as leaves begin to soften, add the oyster sauce mixture.

As soon as the sauce begins to boil, toss in the chilli and coriander. Serve immediately with steamed rice.

Chef Tony Tan will lead a food tour of Vietnam, taking in cooking classes, markets and historic sites, from August 30 to September 9, 2013. Details: tonytan.com.au.

8 comments so far

Worth noting that a lot of domestic stove tops will not produce enough heat to make proper wok cooking possible.

Another tip is to partially freeze meat, which will enable you to slice it very thinly. This shortens cooking time and increases the surface area for maillard browning. For maillard browning to occur you need an absence of moisture, which is why insufficient wok temperatures will fail to deliver.

Commenter

Craig More

Location

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 11:31AM

Chicken thigh fillets are cheaper and have more flavour.

Beef (after sliceing) can be tenderized by mixing it with a teaspoon each of carb soda and cornflour and a little water. Add a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice before using to neutralize the carb soda.

Commenter

Bev

Location

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 11:37AM

Yep, thigh fillets are SO much tastier than breast fillets and, I read recently, are higher in protein than breast meat (for those who care about that sort of thing).

Commenter

JEM

Location

Melb

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 1:10PM

There should be no need to use chemicals to tenderise beef. All you need to do is firstly make your last cut against the grain of the meat, then, marinate - shao xing wine , soy sauce and ginger. Ginger masks the off flavours of beef. Egg white can be used to "velvet" the beef as well.Then, as Tony Tan does with his chicken in the video, par cook the beef - u can even oil or water blanch - then return the beef to your wok after the sauce is added. It will always be tender no matter what the cut

Cheers

Commenter

LeiFeng

Location

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 4:26PM

@bev. Raising the ph of the food by using baking soda enables maillard reactions to occur at a lower temperature. I think it also breaks down the meat fibres even before heat gets to it. In my experience altho it makes for tender meat, both the flavour and the texture suffer overall. In addition, short of rinsing the meat before cooking, you will get a nasty scum when you do cook it. And you are right. Chicken thighs are much better than breast.

@LeiFeng Woks are not magic mate. I actually don't believe marinades do anything at all for tenderness, and Blumenthal's experiments with tandoori chicken seem to support that. There is some REALLY tough and nasty beef on supermarket shelves and it is well past time consumers got better labelling. One of the benefits of stir fries is that you can eat proportionally less meat, so shortcutting on the cost of beef is imo a false economy. Not saying one should use fillet steak, but I'd give those precut stir fry strips you see in Woollies and Coles a miss.

Commenter

Craig More

Location

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 5:39PM

@Craig More I do agree it changes the texture since it breaks down the fibres. I have not found the flavour is affected.So long as the carb soda is neutralized there is no need to wash.I agree beef strips are rubbish. I tend to use Oyster blade steak cheap and reasonably tender.Because of limited heat in a home situation I would rather make two or three smaller dishes.so I can get the heat up by having less ingredients in the wok.I always blanch hard vegetables quickly in boiling water to set the colour.I use 200 gms or less of meat in each dish this is no disadvantage with multiple dishes.

Commenter

Bev

Location

Date and time

February 07, 2013, 4:09PM

Why did I have to watch that during my lunch break eating my salad sandwich? Jeez that looked tatsy